It is difficult to describe in words what an Olympic medal means to an amateur athlete. Instead, there are scenes.

On the side of a mountain in Korea in 2018, four Canadian lugers won a silver medal and exploded with joy, erasing four years of pain that had come with a fourth-place finish in Sochi.

“No words,” Tristan Walker said moments later. As he spoke, his teammate Justin Snith stood next to him, shaking silently as he wept.

At an arena in Rio de Janiero, when Erica Wiebe had wrestled the match of her life to win gold. She held up a Canadian flag, fell to her knees, and buried her face in the middle of the mat. There were tears there, too.

At a different mountain in Korea two years ago, it was Mikael Kingsbury, the greatest moguls skier in history, who let out a huge yell as he crossed the finish line with a perfect run. He had a closet full of trophies and honours, but the relief that winning his first Olympic gold brought absolutely emanated from him that dark, cold night. Not winning would have been unbearable.

These are the things that Team Canada had to consider when it made the decision, announced late Sunday night, that it would not send its athletes to the Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo if they were held as scheduled in 2020.

It was the right decision, as the world reels from the effects of the coronavirus, and it was a brave one, coming only hours after the International Olympic Committee announced that it would wait four more weeks before deciding on a postponement. The Canadian Olympic Committee said, effectively, that it could not wait. Expecting its athletes to continue training right now “runs counter to the public health advice which we urge all Canadians to follow,” it said. This is absolutely true, and it is the part of the IOC’s wait-and-see approach that is, or perhaps was, so untenable. Canadian Dick Pound, an IOC board member, told USA Today on Monday afternoon that the IOC will indeed postpone the Games, though so far there had been no official word to that effect.

Silver medalists Alex Gough, Samoa Edney, Tristan Walker and Justin Snith of Canada celebrate during the Medal Ceremony for the Luge – Team Relay Competition on day seven of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at Medal Plaza on February 16, 2018 in Pyeongchang-gun, South Korea.Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

But if Canada did successfully push the IOC toward the right decision, it was still a brutal call. The COC was on the way to qualifying its largest-ever team for a Summer Olympics, as an operation that was transformed into a medal-winning machine over the past decade-plus continued to churn out potential podium finishers. Even if the Tokyo Olympics are pushed back a year, which is the desired outcome for Team Canada and which offers the least amount of disruption to normal training schedules, it is a plain fact that some of the athletes who had worked for four years toward a peak in July of 2020 will not necessarily be able to reach the same peak in July of 2021. For some, the Olympic dream will be lost. Injuries will happen. Life will happen. Teams will have to weigh if the composition of their rosters 16 months from now should be the same as they would have been in July. For the Paralympics, the difference a year makes can be even more stark. Some athletes have degenerative conditions, and their competitive windows can close fast. A delayed Paralympics could mean no Paralympics at all.

Canada’s Hayley Wickenheiser (L) and Natalie Spooner celebrate with their gold medals after their team defeated Team USA in overtime in the women’s ice hockey final game at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, February 20, 2014.REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

This helps explain why Team Canada did not come to this decision lightly. It was on March 17, less than a week ago, that the COC offered qualified support of an IOC statement that it was too early to consider changing the date of the Tokyo Olympics. Over the ensuing few days the folly of the IOC’s waiting game became all the more evident. Rosie MacLennan, the Canadian double gold medallist and vice-chair of the COC’s athletes’ commission, said they quickly realized that preparing for the Olympics ran counter to public-health advice. “We shouldn’t be prioritizing or focusing on high-performance sport at this time,” she said in an interview, calling the decision to pull out of Tokyo this summer “absolutely emotional and challenging.” But she said she was confident this was the proper move. “The decision is heavy in my heart, but clear in my head,” she said. MacLennan said it is “impossible” to train while respecting social-distancing instructions. Gyms are closed, pools are closed, tracks are closed. Italy is on total lockdown, Germany is banning groups larger than two, and many other countries, including ours, could be moving in that direction. What is a would-be Olympian to do in those circumstances? Hurdle chairs in the kitchen? Throw a javelin off the balcony?

Team Canada, once just happy to be there, has rightly developed a swagger over the past decade

The delay is the only answer. Even allowing for the possibility of rapid global change that gets the virus under control in the coming months, it is the present day that is the problem. Training is unsafe. Expecting athletes to pretend otherwise is foolish. Canada was out in the lead, but others will follow. The Australian Olympic Committee has since said it will not send athletes to Tokyo this summer, and the American track and swimming federations, two pillars of its Olympic teams, have said the United States should push for a postponement. Countries like Brazil and Norway, who had each advocated for a date change, will make their ultimatums more concrete. The Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, said on Monday that a date shift for an Olympics that he no doubt wants to be part of an economic recovery, could be “unavoidable.”

And so, in the end, it will be the International Olympic Committee that finally comes around and admits the obvious. The record will show that Canada had to shame them into doing the right thing.

Team Canada, once just happy to be there, has rightly developed a swagger over the past decade. It won no medals with this decision, but it should be proud just the same.

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